"We were both working at the same place, and we both got let go on the same day," said Kevin Bush, 26.

A month earlier, he and his brother Will, 32, had gotten a music studio, and at the time they were laid off, were living there.

"It was really expensive, and there was no way we were going to fund it," Kevin said. "We realized we've got to make some music before we have to find someplace to live."

At the same time, Will was coming out of a relationship.

"I was in my feelings for a minute," Will said. "I got a third-shift job delivering bread and spent a lot of my time driving at night. That's where the whole concept for the 'Daybreak' EP came to mind, and Immortal Girlfriend was born from that."

Immortal Girlfriend, the brothers' '80s-inspired electronic project, broke out in the local music scene with "Daybreak." WYMS-FM (88.9) championed the project soon after the EP's release in June 2017, and the brothers started performing with and producing for such established scene stars as WebsterX, Lex Allen, Abby Jeanne, B~Free, Zed Kenzo and Lorde Fredd33.

And they have been lining up lucrative local gigs, including an opening slot for EDM duo Louis the Child at Summerfest this year.

"I believed in it, but it was a drop in the ocean," Will said.

"But it's taken on a life of its own," Kevin said.

Early experiences

Will: Our parents played in churches. Our dad plays bass, our mom plays guitar. My dad used to have a funk band back in the day.

Kevin: I was 11 and I wanted to play drums, but, out of the blue, my grandfather bought me a guitar because it's not as noisy. So when I started playing it, I fell in love.

Will: He was getting good at it, and I was at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. At that point, I thought maybe I don't want to do illustrative or visual art, and the interest of music came in and I thought, let me give this a try.

Kevin: We played together in a hard-core screamo band for a few years, Starwind and Hawking.

Embracing electronic music

Will: I got my laptop in 2008 and an early version of FL Studio and started messing around with that. I was listening to a lot of '80s stuff at the time; I was into Depeche Mode, the Police, the Cure, stuff like that. And by 2010, 2011, there were these contemporary electronic bands like M83 and The Naked and Famous that had retro-inspired vibes that I felt had the most influence. I was, like, "I wanted to do a band like this."

Kevin: I started messing around with the software, too, and I'm glad I did, because I fell in love with mixing music. We started an electronic band called Ari Armada, but I was playing drums and running back and forth with guitar, so it was kind of a mess.

Will: We recorded an EP at a studio in Menomonee Falls in 2016, and the owner liked what he heard and hired us as producers a few months later. A few months after that, he moved to Austin and turned over the lease to us.

Band name backstory

Kevin: I usually like to keep it open for interpretation, but music for me was the immortal girlfriend. After getting out of a relationship, I was going to give music 100 percent. And the name came out of a song we made a long time ago, this nerdy sci-fi song about a scientist that made a robot and fell in love with it. One of the lyrics was, "Fight on my immortal girlfriend." So it was an homage to our early work and our first-ever collaboration.

In the works

Will: We're looking to drop a single soon. We're working on a new collection of music. We're still being influenced daily, but we're expanding the instrumentation a little bit. It's not just one sound.

Next gig

Immortal Girlfriend is performing as part of Abby Jeanne's Cosmic Weekend festival Oct. 20 and 21 at the Cooperage (822 S. Water St.), featuring Jeanne, Bully, Lydia Lunch, the Shivas, Fiona Silver, Amanda Huff and more. Immortal Girlfriend performs at 7 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $20 per day, $35 for the weekend, available at the door and cactusclubmilwaukee.com.

Watch two exclusive performances from Immortal Girlfriend at jsonline.com/music. Sound Check appears on or around the 15th each month online and in the Journal Sentinel.